Drum and Bass is a form of electronic (but now in some places, performed with live instruments) music that is played between 160 to 180 beats per minute (bpm). It is a melting pot of diferent musical influences ranging from classical, hip-hop, reggae, jazz, to indian, metal, and so on. Some tunes have vocals and are song structured, but other tunes are straight beats (which let you form your own perception of the track with your imagination). Defined by music production publications as "the most meticulously produced form of electronic music". Drum and Bass has a beautiful contrast in that it can have mass complexity while still maintaining a friendly feel to the dancefloor or the personal cd player. Drum and Bass is also the umbrella term for the genre that has developed countless subgenre's (neurofunk, techstep, hardstep, ragga, jump-up, liquid funk, atmospheric, dubwise, electrostep, metalstep, etc.). To those who don't know much about the music, they would be surprised how much it has in common with the genres that the unknowing listener usualy listens to. It is an open minded genre that requires open minded people to listen to it.

Drum and Bass (commonly abbreviated to D&B or DnB) is a type of electronic dance music which emerged in the mid 1990s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats (typically between 160–190 bpm, occasional variation is noted in older compositions), with heavy bass, sub-bass lines, and occasional infra-bass lines. Drum and bass began as an offshoot of the United Kingdom rave scene of the very early 1990s. Over the first decade of its existence, the incorporation of elements from various musical genres lent to many permutations in its overall style.

The primitive description; a drum loop played over a bass line (definition cut down to its utter least).A product of England (mainly London and Bristol) D&B is said to be the most technical form of music of today (with the most complicated drum logarithms/sequences/patterns and loops even heard).
It became big in the 90's with the rave culture.
There are many differing styles, some more slower and ambient forms are common place on tv ad's and commercials, and is often heard in the background.
It is now more known to be a more intellectual form of electronic music thats deep and meaningful compared to other forms of (modern dance) music. The faster (140bpm+) style obviously attracted the club culture, but the more diverse sub-genres can include jazz,reggae,latin,hiphop or samba vibes.
More recent chart D&B success includes DJ Marky & XS, Jaimeson, and Puretone.
The 90's saw the Prodigy with "charly" become a supreme example of DnB.
This genre is still relativley underground, which is probably the best place for it. It can be a rather explicit form of music, that suits the youth of today and their life style.

Not mindless noise at all, as Burkey tries to claim. The basic premise is pattern based loops put over drum loops, but instead of your regular 4/4 um-tiss-um-tiss drums, it's set over the more flowing breakbeat format. The term drum and bass defines the predominent sounds you get: drums and bass are the sounds that are more predominent. It sticks wit a simple-but-effective motive towards melodies (or basslines is the case of dnb) but the complexity comes in the production of these sounds. The general rule for the sounds are bigger and badder is better, but depending on the style (there are also liquid and more ambient styles) this is also not the case. For those chart-dwellers who aren't quite sure of what this music is like, if you can refer back a few years when a few artists broke through (shy fx & t power, roni size, goldie and pendulum more recently) thats the kind of premise it follows, but that's only the surface of what is such a varied genre of music.to understand this music and to listen to the best, look for the artists in my examples.

rave/club music featuring a prominent bassline, breakbeats (non four to the floor drum beats), samples and a tempo of around 160-180 bpm. drum and bass came from jungle music, which itself was a merger of the sounds of early rave music, reggae/dub and hip hop. this music is the bollocks, if u don't like it, u should!! take some gurners and u might feel differently...

drum and bass is heard live via a dj who spins original tracks and remixes by producers, sometimes an MC is also present to hype the crowd up.

Probably one of the most carefully structured and best produced music in the modern world. Many people say that the "drum and bass effect" gives off pleasurable feelings of past blissful memories, makes users somewhat look forward to the future, dear memories of love and passionate relationships, giving off a somewhat uplifting feeling to particular users, who have a bit more of an artistic influence and background, and who dont enjoy the musical rape of 50 cent and other "big" rnb , mainstream hip-hop artists.

In conclusion: Drum and bass has come a long way, affecting millions of listeners throughout the globe, it hasn't even started to spread its sphere of influence. People who have hearts, people who think twice and people who actually know what music productions is mostly about. All in all bless the bassheads.